


The Trusted Knife

by shadow_wasserson



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Helmsman, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Surgery, The Ancestors - Freeform, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2706053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_wasserson/pseuds/shadow_wasserson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Psiioniic and his surgeon. A tale told in two voices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Your name is Sorevo Thorak , and you are a highly talented lowblood surgeon. With no psychic capabilities to speak of and a projected lifespan that could be counted in its entirety on one's fingers and toes, you are lucky to be where you are. You know this. You are grateful.

You never felt the need to be a soldier. It's not that the sight of blood and spilled organs disgusts you, or that you lack the cold detachment needed for combat tactics. But a rustblood can't rise in the ranks. You'd be stuck as a foot soldier, throwing your life away. So when the time came for recruitment, you submitted for entry into medicine. With a constant stream of injured trolls coming back from the frontiers, there was always demand. You demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of troll anatomy, and performed a limb reattachment on a criminal, live, in front of the panel of Determinators. The verdict was clearly in your favor.

Your specialty is cybernetics, whether remedial, voluntary, or involuntary. The brain-computer interface has always been of particular interest.

You don't trust anyone's knife but your own. You've seen too many sloppy jobs, too many operations that end in disaster. Shortened lifespans. Personality changes. Phantom limbs, including where there was no limb originally. Pain, discomfort, frustration. You pride yourself on getting soldiers back on their feet within a perigee or two, even those nearly blown to pieces. You take a quiet amusement from the fact that, despite caste and aside from the obvious differences in color, the anatomies of your patients are largely the same.

* * *

You are honored beyond belief when you receive a royal summons to design the interface for Her Condesce's helmsman, according to the most modern and efficient principles.

You prepare for perigees, experimenting with immune suppressors and nerve networks, until you have your final blueprint. You submit the plan to Her Condescension, and in return receive a shuttle to the flagship, where you will bring your design into reality.

You are awed by the Battleship Condescension. It is the size of a small city, bristling with armaments, and staffed by thousands of trolls. Your vascular pump thrums in your chest as you are brought down to the engine room. The air is cool inside, with a set of standard helm-sockets and your subject anesthetized and covered on a gurney. You realize that you are meant to begin work immediately.

There are two medical trolls on hand, in case you need assistance, but you wave them off, not trusting anyone's knife but your own. Still, they are higher blooded than you, so you do so politely, and in the most self-deprecating way possible.

You examine your tools. You've been well supplied with all the usual implements, with the addition of a variety of winches to make the task easier. You uncover your subject. A male goldblood, thin and lanky. Eyes closed in cold, dreamless sedation.

You start by raising the gurney, and yourself, to work at the interface between the sockets and the subject. You cut open the subject's hands and carefully extract the major and minor nerves one by one, drawing out the fine endings. You link the proprioceptive nerves to the biomechanical motion sensors that run throughout the ship's hull, then do the same with the feet. You snip off the unnecessary flesh of the limbs, leaving the nerves, and hook them up to the biomech tendrils hanging from the sockets, smearing the wounds with plenty of stem-cell ointment to encourage quick healing. This is the crux of your improved design, allowing for the helmsman to feel the entire ship as they would their body, steering fine movements with as much alacrity as a troll would move their own limbs.

With the subject now hanging vertically, you can access it back and front. You open the skull and insert the reward and punishment nodes into the brain tissue. It would be much easier if you could excise the parts of the brain that fuel consciousness and make the subject into a piece of nonsentient wetware, but as it turns out, consciousness and psionics are inextricably linked. The next best thing is to use conditioning, to allow the captain of the ship to inflict pleasure and pain on the helmsman in accordance with its cooperation.

You make a fistula and insert the feeding tubes into the subject's stomach, and then insert another tube for waste removal from the intestines. Simple plumb-work. Any surgeon could do it. You then work on the shoulders, reinforcing them with metal joints that allow for easy suspension.

A quick hook-up of a dripline to the bloodstream, and that's it. It's really a simple operation, and only takes you six hours. You leave instructions for the helmsman's upkeep, troubleshooting, and healing time before it can be brought online. You're sure the onboard medics can handle it.

You are about to leave when you hear a phlegmatic cough from behind you. You are confused. Surely they used enough sedation…?

You turn, and the subject has raised its head and is looking at you, bleary. It is still unclothed, and is not yet wearing the goggles that will allow it to see where the ship is going. You notice, with a clinical interest, that the eyes are mydriatic, and that the tapetum of the left eye has an unusual iridescence.

It turns away, gargles a bit, then spits out a gob of blood that must have entered the chitinous windtube during the fistula installation. You go to your toolkit to prepare another sedative.

It struggles futilely to rip itself from the sockets as you approach, wearing the same expression of mute horror that you've seen dozens of times, on other helmsmen. Then, as you approach with the sedative syringe, its head snaps up, cries out "No!" and then you are abruptly floating in the air.

Your feet scramble at nothing. "Don't put me out," your subject says.

You say you won't.

When it lets you down, you reach for the conditioning console, and inflict a mild punishment, along with a verbal chastisement. Your subject curls its lip and inhales with a hiss.

After the punishment, you inform it that it will not be able to function properly until the surgery heals.

"Surgery," it says, its voice hoarse. "God." You notice that it speaks with a lisp.

You tell it that you are willing to provide painkillers during healing.

"God," it says again. "Just kill me."

You assure it that once it is healed and it is brought online, neuroplasticity will allow it to integrate with the ship's computers, until fueling the engines feels like second nature.

"And you know from experience?" your subject snaps, fury in its permanently dilated eyes. "I suppose you have done this before?"

You shrug. A fair number of times. But this design is your best yet. As befits the Battleship Condescension.

Your subject’s eyes widen at the name, and swallows thickly. "The Dolorosa," it says quietly. "The Disciple. Where…"

You shrug again. You have heard these names passed around in gossip, some cult of rebels running around on the homeworld. But you are hardly up to date on it.

It closes its eyes, and you step forward to administer the sedative, the conditioning console still in your other hand. But it growls, and a psychic force pushes you backward. You swiftly inflict a moderate punishment, and this time the subject throws its head back, grinding its teeth.

"You are called a lowblood," it says raggedly, once the punishment has subsided. "Why are you doing this?"

You have worked hard to get where you are, and you bare your teeth without meaning to.

"But for luck, you would be where I am," it says. "We are the same."

You tell him - it - that you are nothing alike.

"Aren't we? By the Condesce's doctrine, I should be higher than you. Yet you had no problem with…" He falters. "This."

Orders are orders. You had no choice. And yet, with those mismatched eyes staring you down, you admit to yourself that you do take a certain pleasure in your work, in opening up the bodies of those so much higher than yourself, in seeing them laid out and vulnerable before you. There's a small measure of power, there, and it's the only power you have.

"You are called 'lowblood.' Yet… you don't fight. You do nothing. No one does anything." His lips curl into a sneer. "It's as if you enjoy being ground into the dirt."

You wish that you could excise his larynx, but you know that vocal feedback is important for helmsmen. So you inflict a severe punishment instead.

He screams this time, a keening wail that you are aren't sure is entirely due to the activated node.

Once he gets his voice back, he says, voice cracking: "I do not have his way with words. I never have."

You don't look at the cream-colored tears dripping down his face. You step forward again, and he again pushes you back, shaking his head. So you try something different.

You turn the reward node up to its highest setting, and inflict it on him, again and again. He gasps, and his dilated eyes roll back. "It's not… not your… _ah_."

With your subject now distracted, you are able to draw close enough to inject him with the sedative, and watch his muscles go lax as he succumbs.

His eyes are still open. You don't look at them, and don't imagine them following you as you leave.


	2. Chapter 2

Your name is Mituna Captor, and you wake from a dreamless haze, your head lolling against your chest. You don't want to wake up. You don't want to feel, don't want to remember.

You hear his voice in your mind as though he is shouting in your ear, as you remember him doing so often in life.

_WAKE, WIGGLERS OF ALTERNIA. WAKE FROM YOUR PREBIRTH SLEEP, BREAK YOUR EGGS, AND SEE._

Right. That sermon. The one that compares the complacent citizenry to unborn wigglers. It was one of the better ones, and you remember its message well.

You can't be complacent. You must fight.

The first thing you allow yourself to notice is that the throbbing pain in your head, limbs, and stomach has subsided to a dull ache. The second thing is that your hands and legs seem to be… big. Bigger than they should be. You are surrounded by them, as though you were somehow cupping your body with your hands.

You open your eyes.

You're wearing goggles again, so you can see properly without the dim light hurting your retinas. You also seem to be clothed, wearing a skin-tight bodysuit with (you arch your neck down to look) a port built into the side where he cut you open.

You lift your head, and you see him, standing there, rust-red eyes scrutinizing you with a greater intensity than they had before (when was that? A perigee ago? A sidereal period? Longer?).

"You've healed enough to function, now." He says, voice flat. "You will be taken for a test run shortly. It will be an easy trip, just a straight push, an acceleration to near-lightspeed, and a deceleration to zero velocity."

You don't respond. Why should you talk to him? He ripped into your body and violated your mind. He doesn't deserve answers.

"I requested a moment to check you over, to make sure that your conscious functions are working as well as your unconscious. I have already tested your unconscious functions."

You don't respond. Your scalp itches, and you wish that you could scratch it.

He opens his mouth, then closes it. Then, "I looked into your history. Of course, I do not have access to your criminal record, at my station. But I was able to research the titles you gave me. 'The Dolorosa.' 'The Disciple.' High-ranking members of a popular, recently-crushed cult on the homeworld. Preachers of a doctrine that included the abolition of culling, pacifism, equality of all hemotypes, and other heresies." He pauses. "I determined quickly that you must have been a high-ranking member of this cult. The only other members of the cult that were of similar station to The Dolorosa and The Desciple were the one they called 'The Ψiioniic' and the cult's leader, titled 'The Signless.' The Signless was recently executed, so I can only assume you were the Ψiioniic."

You squeeze your eyes shut at their titles, and force yourself to breathe. You ask him, at length, if he is proud at finding you out.

"No," he replies. "Only curious. I wanted to know why you did not kill me before."

You look at him. You don't understand.

"I had a variety of surgical implements at hand, when you awoke from sedation. A high-level telekinetic such as yourself would have had no problem cutting me to ribbons. Yet you only disabled my ability to move. Even after I inflicted punishment on you."

_OUR STRENGTH IS IN OUR KINDNESS, IN OUR EMPATHY. TO SPILL THE BLOOD OF ONE THAT WRONGS US IS NOT A SIGN OF NOBILITY. TO EMPTY THE LIFE FROM ONE THAT HURTS US IS AT TIMES A NECESSITY. BUT IT IS NEVER A PLEASURE, NEVER A CAUSE OF CELEBRATION._

You mull over your words. Then you tell him that you didn't think killing him would help you, or would undo what had been done.

"Very pragmatic," he replies, nodding. "Very level-headed. Even if you had a death wish, The Condesce would never destroy her property for the death of a rustblood."

You nod.

He tilts his head. "However, I am curious at your lack of vengeful urges. After all, it wouldn't have _hurt_ to kill me."

You narrow your eyes at him. What is he saying?

"Oh, don't misunderstand me. _I_ don't have a death wish. I merely want to make sure the surgery didn't damage your emotional centers."

He had never hated the highbloods. He hated their rule, and what they did, but he did not blame them. It was a part of his doctrine that everyone in the hemospectrum was a victim of it, that the highbloods were as constrained by their caste as everyone else. After all, what young lowblood didn't dream of the spectrum being reversed, of having the power to abuse as they had been abused? It was the hemospectrum system itself that created cruelty, not the nature of highbloods.

He had never hated the highbloods. Not until the end. Not until he writhed in his bonds and screamed curses into the cosmos, before the arrow finally silenced him. You can still see his blood when you close your eyes.

You had never known such a gentle troll. And you know you should not feel betrayed.

Damaged emotional centers. What a joke.

"Well," says the surgeon. "It seems that you are in good working condition. I need to get some rest. As a surgeon, I make it a practice to not delegate my work." He looks at you, and stares into your eyes with intense focus. "I only trust my own knife."

You stare back, puzzled, as the surgeon leaves.

Then the door closes, and you are alone. You shiver, though the temperature is not unduly cold. A glint of light on polished metal catches your eye.

There is a scalpel on the floor. A large one, sharp. The surgeon must have dropped it.

When you realize what he has done for you, your vascular pump nearly stops.

_DARE, MY FRIENDS. DARE TO HOPE. HOPE IS THE FIRE WE CARRY, HOPE IS THE WARMTH IN OUR VEINS, HOPE IS WHY WE LOOK UP FROM WHERE WE LAY ON THE GROUND, AND SAY, WITH COMPLETE AND UNABASHED HONESTY:_ **_YES_ ** _. YES I WILL GET UP. YES I WILL FIGHT ANOTHER DAY. YES I WILL KEEP STRIVING. HOPE IS COURAGE, HOPE IS NOBILITY, HOPE IS THE SHIP THAT WILL BEAR US TO A NEW WORLD._

He would not approve. He would look down on you for this. He would say to keep fighting.

But how could you even fight, now?

" _How?_ " you ask aloud, but of course, he can't answer. He is dead. He is gone. All you have left are memories, rattling around in your head.

God, you're so tired of fighting.

Your eyes spark beneath the helmsman goggles, and the scalpel lifts up. You bring it up until it hovers in front of you, examining it. It's of sufficiently large size to slit your throat.

Once, he would have frowned upon you, doing this, but…

_Him, screaming. Him, burning, bleeding. Him, bearing his teeth to the sky and damning the universe._

You hover the blade to the side of your neck.

Then, a delicate hand takes it away.

You look up, and there is the most gravely beautiful troll you’ve ever seen, standing in front of you. Her long horns curl like a woolbeast’s, and she looks at you with eyes of burgundy ice.

She’s holding the knife, and when she speaks, it’s with a thick accent that you’ve never heard before.

“You think you get to quit now?” she asks. She laughs like the sound of a door being locked, and shakes her head. “No.”

Coordinates appear on the inside of your goggles, along with the image of a star map, with a planned route outlined brightly. You realize that you are supposed to be steering the ship.

You blink in confusion, and then the other troll is gone, the knife gone with her.

A sudden stab of pain makes your jaw clench. It's a pain without direction, and seems to burn everywhere at once, so it must be from the node in your brain.

You steer the ship.

(Then, and every time you complete a journey from now until the end of your long, long, life, they reward you, through the node, with just the barest shiver of pleasure.)

(It's not enough to make you forget, during those silent voids in between.)

(Did you think it would be?)


End file.
